Chapter summary: Quine’s Naturalized Philosophy of Language

This chapter's objective was to describe Quine´s philosophy of language and subjects closely related. After the more general description of Quine’s philosophy of language in subchapters

35 This ability to predict future events is one of the goals of science, for as has been noted before, Quine (1953, 45) has stated that: “As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience.” It is a pit puzzling, however, when later in his career Quine states for example that: “Not that prediction is the main purpose of science. One major purpose is understanding. Another is control and modification of the environment.” (1992, 1–2).

36 This has a considerable effect on a substantial part of metaphysics; ontological matters are not rejected as meaningless, rather, ontological matters are inherently relative.

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3.1 and 3.2, we moved on to the description of Quine's conception on the nature of language and linguistic meaning in subchapters 3.2.1 and 3.2.2. In the latter part of the chapter, we moved on to the more specific theories and theses that relate to Quine´s philosophy of language; Quine's holism was discussed in subchapter 3.2.3, his indeterminacy of translation was discussed in chapter 3.3.1 and finally his inscrutability of reference was the subject of subchapter 3.3.2. All of these subjects were then reviewed in relation to Quine’s naturalistic philosophy and his statements concerning the nature of truth.

In relation to Quine's philosophy of language, two philosophical commitments proved to be fundamentally important. First, we saw how empiricism acted as the foundation that Quine went on to build his philosophy of language. This interpretation gained support from the works of contemporary researchers, for example Hylton (2007, 102) has stated that: "Quine's approach to language is simply a special case of his empiricism." Thus, one of the most central commitments of Quine’s general naturalistic philosophy – explicitly stated as his strict empiricism – proved to have significant impact on his view on the nature and function of language. Second, we saw how Quine has committed to linguistic behaviorism: “In psychology one may or may not be a behaviorist, but in linguistics one has no choice[.]”

(1992, 37). These two commitments – explicitly stated as empiricism and behaviorism – form the foundation for Quine’s (1968, 187) "naturalistic view of language".

The description of Quine's semantic framework is relevant for the purposes of this study for several reasons. First, it lays foundation for the two indeterminacy theses that were discussed in the last two subchapters. The behavioral criterion that was introduced in the description of Quine's conception of the nature and function of language had major influence over his conception on the nature of meaning. Quine’s critique towards a determinate notion of meaning is a dominant feature of his philosophy of language: "[M]eanings themselves, as obscure intermediary entities, may well be abandoned." (1951, 22). We further saw how Quine (1981, 44) understood meaning as something that an expression may have, depending on the interpretation. What was seen to follow from these commitments is that Quine’s philosophy of language leaned towards the pragmatic aspect of language use and its nature as a communicative system: "[T]he purpose of concepts and language is efficacy in communication and prediction.” (1953, 79). In addition, we saw how in the latter part of his career, Quine (1960, 27–35; see 1969c 79–80) went on to formulate his own conception of empirical meaning in the form of stimulus meaning that is inherently indeterminate: "For

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naturalism the question whether two expressions are alike or unlike in meaning has no determinate answer, known or unknown, except insofar as the answer is settled in principle by people’s speech dispositions, known or unknown." (1968, 187). Thus, the naturalistic view of language emphasizes the pragmatic aspects of language use and the success it provides in communication and making predictions. As Harman (2009, 1) has accordingly expressed: “In his [Quine's] view, to understand someone is to interpret them - that is, to find a way to translate from their outlook into your own. Interpretation is translation. And translation is indeterminate.”

Quine's holism is a central subject in the context of this study for a couple of reasons: First, Quine understands language systems and scientific theories as holistic systems. Second, Quine's holism lays foundation for the claim of how truth is immanent to a theory. Quine’s holism and its two forms have effect on his view on the nature of science, scientific theories and linguistic systems; all of these themes relate directly to his truth conception.

Quine’s indeterminacy of translation was noticed to rely on his rejection of a determinate notion of meaning. The referential relation between language and reality was seen as inherently indeterminate. The "enterprise of translation" is inherently indeterminate (Quine 1960, 9). Further, the truth of a sentence becomes language relative. However, Quine (1995c, 353) saw that the function of the truth predicate is something that carries over translation.

Through the rejection of a determinate notion of meaning and the thesis of indeterminacy of translation we finally described Quine's thesis of inscrutability of reference, which was a claim about the indeterminacy of languages referential relation to reality – there is no way of determining what any linguistic expression refers to. From this, Quine derived that the ontological commitments of any scientific theory or world view become relative or instrumental. The thesis of ontological relativity claims that "[t]he objects, or values of variables, are just reference points along the way, and we may permute or supplant them as we please as long as the sentence-to-sentence structure is preserved" (Quine 1980, 53–54) and that "[w]hat particular objects there may be is indifferent to the truth of observation sentences, indifferent to the support they lend to theoretical sentences, indifferent to the success of the theory in its predictions" (1992, 31).

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In the following chapter, our focus will turn to Quine's conception of truth. The descriptions and discussions that have been presented thus far in the previous two chapters will acts as a foundation for the third chapter of this study, for Quine's naturalistic philosophy and his philosophy of language directly relate to his considerations on the nature of truth.

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